With development of digital home and widespread digitalization of consumer electronics (CE), an increasing number of digital entertainment devices and home appliances appear in a family. To form a home area network by connecting, in a wired or wireless manner, home area network devices such as the entertainment devices and home appliances, so as to implement functions of content sharing, mutual control, and the like, is a digital home area network concept that the industry is conceiving and striving to achieve.
To implement interworking and control among different types of home devices, an increasing number of home area network devices support universal plug and play (UPnP). Further, to implement a media sharing scenario among a plurality of devices on a home area network, the UPnP defines an audio and video (AV) standard. This standard defines three types of entities on the home area network: a media server (MS), a device for storing a media resource; a media renderer (MR), a device for playing the media resource; and an AV control point (CP), an entity for controlling the foregoing two devices. An AV CP browses the media resource of the MS, and then the MR plays the media. In this way, a function that the MR plays the media resource of the MS is implemented.
During a process of implementing the present invention, the inventors find that an existing solution only relates to a home area network that includes a single MS and a single MR, and a media resource on the MS cannot be played when a format of the media resource cannot be played in the MR, and the MS is incapable of converting the format of the media resource into a format that can be played by the MR.